Posted on 08/03/2015 3:14:04 AM PDT by markomalley
Labor groups sent nearly half a million dollars to Planned Parenthood in 2014, according to federal disclosure forms.
Three of the nation’s largest unions—the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), and Service Employees International Union (SEIU), contributed $435,000 to the nation’s largest abortion provider.
Almost all of that money was spent on political advocacy. AFSCME donated $400,000 to the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, which spent about $1 million helping Democratic campaigns in 2014, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. UFCW categorized its $10,000 donation as political activity in federal labor filings.
Not all of the donations were political in nature. Some were categorized as charitable contributions to the billion-dollar organization, which performs more than 300,000 abortions each year. The remaining $25,000 given by AFSCME and SEIU were described as “grants” to a “tax-exempt organization.”
None of the unions returned request for comment about the specific purpose of the donations or whether they intended to maintain relations with the organization in the wake of recent scandals.
The Center for Medical Progress, a pro-life group, has released several hours of video of top Planned Parenthood officials discussing organ harvesting and the sale of remains in manner that may run afoul of federal law. The group released a fourth video Thursday showing Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains Vice President Dr. Savita Ginde sifting through the remains of “another boy” while drawing attention to various organs and praising a “per item” payment schedule for pieces of the fetuses.
“It’s a baby,” she said on tape as an assistant probed the body for intact body parts to sell to undercover videographers posing as prospective organ buyers.
While donating fetal body parts is legal, federal law prohibits the alteration of abortion techniques to harvest usable parts of the fetus, and also prohibits any sale of the body parts.
Planned Parenthood and Democrats have attempted to shield the group, which now faces three congressional investigations, by saying the “tissue donations” are used for medical research. Ginde, the Rocky Mountain executive, told the CMP actors that the group would use the blanket term “research” to justify its financial benefit from the sale of body parts.
“In public, I think it makes a lot more sense for it to be in the research vein than, I’d say, a business venture,” she said.
Patrick Semmons, a vice president at the National Right to Work Foundation, told the Washington Free Beacon that union members may oppose abortion, but have little say in how their dues money is spent because only half of states bar coercive unionism.
“Union bosses will continue to use workers’ dues money as a slush fund to support controversial causes and organizations as long as union officials are empowered to order a worker fired simply for refusing to pay money to the union,” he said.
Planned Parenthood has received hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars since Barack Obama took office in 2008, including tens of millions of dollars from the United States Agency for International Development while Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton was secretary of state.
Clinton has called the imagery in the videos “disturbing,” but continues to support Planned Parenthood and late-term abortions. She has received about $10,000 from abortionists in 2015—20 times more than the rest of the presidential field combined.
The GOP is now considering several bills that would withdraw federal funding of Planned Parenthood outright or freeze it until the congressional investigations raised by the videos are complete.
I say this because the membership votes for those union bosses, right?
Thank God I’m in a right to work state and am not a union goon.
I never worked under a union and don’t see the need for one. Perhaps they were useful in improving working conditions years ago, but nowadays, they are a criminal enterprise extorting money from the membership to finance politicians and the leaders’ lavish lifestyles. They’ve done nothing for the average worker in decades and in fact, have been instrumental in the sorry unemployment situation we have now. Really can’t understand why most people in my neck of the woods still love and support them.
“Right to work” does not mean that unions cannot attempt to come in and organize the workers, but it must be done openly and with full transparency for all the employees to fully assess for themselves that there was a personal benefit to become a member (I mean besides avoiding a beating in the back alley behind the plant). This was a differentiation that was developed under the “New Deal” of FDR, in which unions were given an inordinate authority to organize the industrial base, and many other aspects of commercial operations.
Henry Ford kept the unions out of his plants for years, by the simple expedient of offering his employees an hourly wage just a few cents more than had been won by union strikes against other manufacturers, and the promise that if his workers DID organize and vote to join the union, their hourly wage rate would DROP to the negotiated wage of union workers. Henry Ford also kept hired thugs to bust up union organizers at the gates to the plants, and there was a famous confrontation between Harry Bennett’s thugs and the Reuther brothers, Walter and Victor, organizers for UAW, using their own bunch of thugs.
There was also a less famous confrontation between the union organizers and Edsel Ford, behind the plant, in which Edsel was severely beaten, and shortly thereafter, fell ill and died. The union people have always denied that Edsel’s death was in any way due to the beating, but Henry got the message, and after years of resisting the unions, invited them in soon afterwards, as WW II was running full blast, and FDR was not letting this go.
Oh, I am in a union shop (USPS). But not a member.
I have spoken openly against it, railing that its a money laundering operation for the demonrat party.
I have had my share of nasty looks, but they’re all old ponytailed men or ugly little lesbians. I do not fear.
Steal money from workers and send it to the baby butchers. What a country!
“’Right to work’ does not mean that unions cannot attempt to come in and organize the workers, ...”
But it does mean that a worker cannot be compelled by the company or by the union to join the union as a condition of employment.
None of the unions returned request for comment about the specific purpose of the donations or whether they intended to maintain relations with the organization in the wake of recent scandals.
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